A man suspected of hacking into the website of one of the country's biggest abortion providers was being questioned by police on Friday.

The 27-year-old, who claims to have links to Hacktivist group Anonymous, was arrested during the early hours of this morning on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act, Scotland Yard said.

It comes after the website of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) was hacked into and defaced yesterday. Data on the website, which is currently down and can not be viewed, was also compromised, police said.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit executed a search warrant at an address in Wednesbury, West Midlands, before arresting the suspect who is currently in custody at a West Midlands Police Station.

Police said they were alerted to allegations that the BPAS website has been hacked yesterday.

Claims later appeared on Twitter that the culprit had accessed the names of women who had undergone terminations and was threatening to release them into the public domain.

However, police said the stolen data did not contain any medical details of women who had received treatment.

Detective Inspector Mark Raymond from the Met's e-Crime Unit said: "We have taken rapid action to identify and arrest a suspect involved in hacking.

"This was done to prevent personal details of people who had requested information from the BPAS website being made public.

"It should be stressed that the stolen data did not contain the medical details of women who had received treatment or why individuals had contacted the British Pregnancy Advisory Service."

BPAS is a non-statutory abortion provider and has a number of clinics across the country.

It also provides counselling for unplanned pregnancy and abortion treatment and gives advice about contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing and sterilisation.